Archive for the ‘PhysX Tools’ Category

Among other changes and improvements, MassFX, PhysX SDK based physics simulation solution, was upgraded with a number of new features.

Artists can now enjoy a more integrated and accurate dynamic toolset, thanks to a wide range of enhancements and additions to the MassFX unified system of simulation solvers.

Highlights are a new mCloth module that features tearable fabric and support for dynamic ragdoll hierarchies. In addition, improved constraints, better handling of pivot points, and enhanced UI readability help improve overall workflow.

NVIDIA has uploaded a following video, revealing new, never seen before, module for APEX Framework, called APEX Dynamic Systems (it is still an early prototype, however).

Detailed description is not available yet, but it seems that this new module is supposed to speed up the creation process of complex dynamic actors like articulations, ragdolls and vehicles, by providing artist friendly environment, where one can easily create and tune such objects and preview their behaviour.

NVIDIA has uploaded a set of demontrational videos, which were used to showcase features of NVIDIA APEX toolset, its authoring capabilities and games integrations examples at GDC 2012.

APEX Turbulence Module

We find APEX Turbulence demo particularly impressive, since particle simulation of such magnitude and complexity (scene contains up to 180 000 particles combined) is yet to be seen in games, while it can be used to create new generation of realistic smoke, dust and explosion effects.

It is good to see that this module has finally reached production stage. Turbulence is promised to be released as part of APEX 1.2

Presentation has started with overview of APEX Clothing module using full-body clothing (tie, jacket, pants) on Bryce Wayne character from recently released Batman: Arkham City title as example. Dynamic clothing on Samaritan character was also demoed, but we had session about it at previous GDC already.

As a nice addition, few words were said about features of new clothing solver, introduced in PhysX SDK 3 (we expect it to appear in APEX Clothing 1.2):

In this video we show our new destruction prototype. Here, piec fractures pieces on the fly. There is no limit of how many times pieces can be fractured. Also, the fracture pattern depends on the impact location.

To simulate the massive amount of rigid bodies we use GRBs – GPU accelerated rigid boides.

Wooly character contains 840 000 particles simulated as 100 000 invidual strands of fur and is running on new solver that is currently under active research.

Real-time fracturing will be nice addition to the APEX Destruction module, which, currently, is utilizing only pre-fractured meshes. Fracturing happening in real-time, accordingly to impact force and point of damage application will certanly make destruction look more natural and immersive.

Recently, its author known as Finalspace has presented an updated version of this application, which is now called Fluid Sandbox.

Update: Fluid Sandbox 1.4.5 is up. New version is based on PhysX SDK 3.1 and features improved rendering, additional scenarios, better support for multi-core CPUs, fluid emitters and drains.

New release is named “Sandbox” for a reason – most of the data is now stored in XML format, so it is possible to customize existing scenarios (or even create new ones), edit scene and simulation properties, or add custom obstacles.

Apart from that, updated features include improved Screen Space Fluid Rendering option, new basic scenarios, more flexible settings and properly working interaction between fluid particles and rigid bodies.

As we already mentioned in our previous article, Fluid Sandbox is a great tool to play with, which functionality surpasses any other PhysX Fluid demos ever released.